Products for grant FA-51581-05

Prayers from the Field: Practical Protection and Demonic Defense in Anglo-Saxon England (Article)
Title: Prayers from the Field: Practical Protection and Demonic Defense in Anglo-Saxon England
Author: Karen Louise Jolly
Abstract: A unique set of ritual prayers from tenth-century Northumbria offered the means to protect fields and crops from birds, vermin, and other demonically inspired threats to the agricultural community. They were part of a series of additions made to the Durham Collectar or Ritual (Durham, Cathedral Library A.IV.19) around 970 by the Chester-le-Street scriptorium of St. Cuthbert’s community, under the direction of Aldred, the eccentric glossator of the Lindisfarne Gospels. These five Latin prayers glossed in Old English use exorcistic and benedictional formulas, invoke the assistance of an Archangel Panchiel, and contain atypical references to the Book of Tobit, among other unusual characteristics. This seemingly heterodox material has received scant attention from scholars assessing the Durham Ritual manuscript and the work of Aldred. These prayers, however, may reflect the particular interests of the cult of St. Cuthbert, as well as Irish influences in Northumbrian religious practice. Also, a comparable example of one prayer appears in a contemporary Mainz text related to the early development of the Romano-Germanic Pontifical, suggesting that these prayers were part of a larger process, often invisible, of liturgical experimentation during a period of reform and regularization.
Year: 2006
Primary URL: http://www.jstor.org/pss/27832056
Primary URL Description: JSTOR
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Traditio 61: 95-147

The Community of St. Cuthbert in the Late Tenth Century: The Chester-le-Street Additions to Durham Cathedral Library A.IV.19 (Book)
Title: The Community of St. Cuthbert in the Late Tenth Century: The Chester-le-Street Additions to Durham Cathedral Library A.IV.19
Author: Jolly, Karen Louise
Abstract: The Community of St. Cuthbert in the Late Tenth Century: The Chester-le-Street Additions to Durham Cathedral Library A.IV.19 reveals the dynamic role a seemingly marginalized community played during a defining period for the emergence of English religious identity. Based on her new critical edition of additions made to Durham Cathedral Library A.IV.19 and by questioning the purpose of those late tenth-century additions, Karen Louise Jolly is able to uncover much about the Chester-le-Street scribes and their tumultuous time, rife as it was with various political tensions, from Vikings and local Northumbrian nobles to an increasingly dominant West Saxon monarchy.
Why, for instance, would a priest laboriously insert an Old English gloss above every Latin word in a collection of prayers intended to be performed in Latin? What motivated the same English scribe to include Irish-derived Christian materials in the manuscript, including prayers invoking the archangel Panchiel to clear birds from a field?
Jolly’s extensive contextual analysis includes a biography of Aldred, the priest and provost of the community primarily responsible for adding these unusual texts. Besides reinterpreting the manuscript’s paleography and codicology, she investigates both the drive for reform evidenced by the added liturgical materials and the new importance of Irish-derived encyclopedic and educational materials.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/isbn//9780814211816
Primary URL Description: WorldCat entry
Secondary URL: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~kjolly/
Secondary URL Description: Author's university webpage.
Publisher: The Ohio State University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780814211816

Durham Cathedral Library MS A.IV.19, fols. 61r11-88v (Web Resources)
Title: Durham Cathedral Library MS A.IV.19, fols. 61r11-88v
Author: Karen Louise Jolly, ed.
Abstract: ScholarSpace at University of Hawaii at Manoa offers open access to the edition of the manuscript transcription found in the Appendix of The Community of St. Cuthbert in the Late Tenth Century.
Year: 2013
Primary URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10125/26967
Primary URL Description: Edition of Durham Cathedral Library MS A.IV.19, fols. 61r11-88v.
Secondary URL: http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/
Secondary URL Description: ScholarSpace at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Revealing Words: Northumbria in the Tenth Century (Web Resources)
Title: Revealing Words: Northumbria in the Tenth Century
Author: Karen Louise Jolly
Abstract: Blog based on analysis of Aldred's additions and glosses in Durham Cathedral Library MS A.IV.19 and the LIndisfarne Gospels. The author is working on a historical fiction novel that will bring the insights into late tenth century Northumbrian culture gained from this research to a general audience.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: https://litteramepandat.wordpress.com/
Primary URL Description: Revealing Words blog of Karen Jolly.